Communicating with feeling

Communication between users in shared editors takes place in a deprived environment - distributed users find it difficult to communicate. While many solutions to the problems this causes have been suggested this paper presents a novel one. It describes one possible use of haptics as a channel for communication between users. User's telepointers are considered as haptic avatars and interactions such as haptically pushing and pulling each other are afforded. The use of homing forces to locate other users is also discussed, as is a proximity sensation based on viscosity. Evaluation of this system is currently underway

Living and Learning With New Media: Summary of Findings From the Digital Youth Project

Summarizes findings from a three-year study of how new media have been integrated into youth behaviors and have changed the dynamics of media literacy, learning, and authoritative knowledge. Outlines implications for educators, parents, and policy makers

Textiles as Material Gestalt: Cloth as a Catalyst in the Co-designing Process

Textiles is the common language within Emotional Fit, a collaborative research project investigating a person-centred, sustainable approach to fashion for an ageing female demographic (55+). Through the co-designing of a collection of research tools, textiles have acted as a material gestalt for exploring our research participants' identities by tracing their embodied knowledge of fashionable dress. The methodology merges Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, co-design and a simultaneous approach to textile and garment design. Based on an enhanced understanding of our participants textile preferences, particular fabric qualities have catalysed silhouettes, through live draping and geometric pattern cutting to accommodate multiple body shapes and customisation. Printedtextiles have also been digitally crafted in response to the contours of the garment and body and personal narratives of wear. Sensorial and tactile interactions have informed the engineering and scaling of patterns within zero-waste volumes. The article considers the functional and aesthetic role of textiles

Girl-Next-Door to Girlboss: Taylor Swift’s Online Evolution from Puerile Pop Star to Poignant Political Influence

Of all society’s public figures, the social-media-savvy celebrity is arguably the most powerful. Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift has amassed one of the largest followings on the internet. In recent years, she has inspired fans to act upon sociopolitical issues via voter registration, letter-writing campaigns, and music. Her digital footprint is not without contention from a slow arrival to politics to white feminist attributes present in her messaging. Through close reading across four social media platforms, I found a shift in Swift’s social media activity. In her transition from a young pop star to a global influence, I concluded that “Swifties” will follow her lead and create real change

Living and Learning with New Media

This report summarizes the results of an ambitious three-year ethnographic study, funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, into how young people are living and learning with new media in varied settings—at home, in after school programs, and in online spaces. It offers a condensed version of a longer treatment provided in the book Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out (MIT Press, 2009). The authors present empirical data on new media in the lives of American youth in order to reflect upon the relationship between new media and learning. In one of the largest qualitative and ethnographic studies of American youth culture, the authors view the relationship of youth and new media not simply in terms of technology trends but situated within the broader structural conditions of childhood and the negotiations with adults that frame the experience of youth in the United States.The book that this report summarizes was written as a collaborative effort by members of the Digital Youth Project, a three-year research effort funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California.John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Reports on Digital Media and Learnin

Creating Your Bubble: Personal Space On and Around Large Public Displays

We describe an empirical study that explores how users establish and use personal space around large public displays (LPDs). Our study complements field studies in this space by more fully characterizing interpersonal distances based on coupling and confirms the use of on-screen territories on vertical displays. Finally, we discuss implications for future research: limitations of proxemics and territoriality, how user range can augment existing theory, and the influence of display size on personal space

Collaborative Conversations for Change: A SolutionFocused Approach to Family Centered Practice

The renewed interest in Family Centered Practice, prompted by the funding of Family Preservation and Support Programs, has created a need for training practitioners at a number of different levels and for a variety of roles. This paper will describe a training program for Family Centered Practice. Building on an empowerment model, the author presents an approach for working with families and children that views the tragedies of the past as resources, rather than the major cause of present problems. Collaborative Conversations for Change adapts the solution-focused therapy model to nontherapy roles that are required for a program to be family centered. Although these roles are not therapy, they are nevertheless therapeutic and reinforce clients\u27 strengths. These collaborative conversations, however brief they may be, recognize that the client is the expert on his/her pain and struggles and the practitioner is the expert on assisting her/him plan change. Additionally, illustrations from a cross-cultural perspective demonstrate the utility of collaborative conversation in enhancing cultural competence

Intra-vulnerabilities: An Artistic Strategy for Co-creating Culture and Policy with Communities, Funders and Artists

Funding arts and cultural activity for socially and economically vulnerable communities in the UK carries a deeply embedded practice of culture as compensation. With a tendency to measure the success of these activities through models of impact constructed by funders, such cultural programmes can omit community knowledge and subsequently further their marginalisation. This thesis investigates whether and how funders, artists, and communities can disrupt these one-sided instrumental approaches, by working together towards co-creating culture and policy. It does so specifically through artistic practice as research (PaR)- interrogating a participatory, transdisciplinary installation practice as a productive site for embodying new relationships between those giving and those receiving. As funders, artists and communities performatively shift between expertise and learning, the thesis proposes that the interdependence of their respective sets of knowledge enacts a more equitable policy process for cultural programming in service of a spectrum of socio-economic, creative and aesthetic needs. Underpinned by Karen Barad’s ‘intra-active agential realism,’ the thesis develops a concept of ‘intra-vulnerabilities’, whereby vulnerability is a positive term, extending beyond its usual placement within marginalised communities to include a range of differentiated, circumstantial vulnerabilities amongst funders and artists. As all three parties participate in five iterative PaR projects, vulnerabilities manifest in personal reflection, listening, dialogue, acts of art-making and recognition of a ‘mutual entailment’ in social inequities. Integrating Rosalyn Diprose’s reframing of generosity as a multi-directional landscape of giving, the concept of intra-vulnerabilities (as generated specifically within artistic practice) manifests a valuable interdependence between nuanced and changing vulnerabilities across the provision spectrum that can not only inform but enact policy. Developed in collaboration with Hammersmith United Charities, a 400 year-old housing and community grants giving organisation, the PaR projects ultimately inform and produce an artistic strategy for co-creating culture and policy. An online portfolio of the practice manifests in tandem with the writing, supporting the thesis’ contribution to new knowledge in asserting artistic practice as a key component for artistic policy: https://www.carolyndefrin.com/onlineportfolio . This online portfolio is additionally submitted on a DVD to accompany the written thesis